Third Challenge: Week 2

I made it through the first week of exercise! YAY! Ok, that being said, the reason I didn't do an update last week is because my arms hurt too much to lift them, and my fingers were swollen up like wee sausages. I did a mix of gardening (HA! More like waging war against the flora in my yard. But, the kind of war in which you try to pull roots out for hours on end, then whack at them frantically with a shovel until finally your husband comes out and tells you that he just bought you a hatchet on Amazon and can you please stop until it comes because he's getting a little concerned...) and bodyweight exercises on my yoga swing.  I ended up digging up and yanking on parts of my stupid yard for eight hours over three days, and did 15-20 minutes of bodyweight exercise each day on the other three days. Sunday, I rested, because damn. I hurt. I hurt in places I didn't know had muscles.  For the first three days, it felt like I had a fever because my muscles were running so hot and swollen.  There was whining. There was so. much. whining.  There was also falling asleep at 9:30-10 most nights from sheer exhaustion.  In case you couldn't tell, I detested this challenge.  But then, something weird happened.  The pain finally backed off, and I stopped dropping off to sleep like a nonagenarian every time I sat still for more than five minutes at a time.  Do I feel stronger? Not really, and whereas I could do four hours of yardwork the first day, I became completely drained about two hours in on subsequent days. There also isn't any improvement in the measurement area.  But hey! At least I no longer feel like a particularly bruised banana, so there's that.
For week two, I'll probably do more of the same, but add in 50 jumping jacks every day, and work on my old physical therapy leg exercises too. I'll let you know how it goes.

Updates and Third Challenge

I'm back.  Sigh.  The last challenge went great for the first week, and then I got some kind of upper-respiratory infection that kept going for two weeks.  TWO WEEKS of continuous coughing!  Ugh.  I'm still coughing a bit, but fortunately, last weekend the coughing fits finally leveled off so that I could sleep again.  All this is a long way to say that I did great on the first week of the challenge, and then coughed so hard I couldn't take pictures for the next two weeks. I've spent this past week trying to catch up on everything I got behind on while I was sick.

Fortunately, I think I've finally dug myself out of the pile of laundry, caught up on grading, and cleaning, and can at last focus on the project again.  I know that I love photography, and even just a week of it was enough to light the fire under me again, so I'll continue working on pictures, and move on to the next challenge.

I spent about four hours today fighting with the plants and vines that have overgrown portions of my yard, and realized that being sick (and hating exercise with the kind of energy Inigo Montoya reserves for those who killed his father) has really led to me being in what medical professionals refer to as "crap shape".  I have muscles I didn't even know existed screaming at me to find something stronger than Advil and wine.  (Look, muscles, I'm sorry I screwed you up.  Please don't cripple me the day before I start a new challenge.)  I'm still walking fairly regularly, now that I don't scare small children with my consumptive hacking, but dayum, mah strongs are GONE.  Part of this really is being sick and in bed for the better part of two weeks, but part of it is that I really hate how crappy I feel when I work out.  Basically, my muscles just feel torn and sad the entire time that I'm doing stuff and then never heal.  SO!  I'm going to start the cycle of muscle abuse again!  But, this time, I'm not going to get up at 5:30 AM so that I can weight lift for an hour and then drag my damaged body home.  (Yes, this was a thing I did.  No, I don't think I was having an "episode". Yes, I actually did cripple myself for over a week with my first weight session.  No, I still have no clue why I thought this was a good idea. Even though I was eating healthily and working out like this, I ended up gaining 10 pounds and multiple inches, rather than gaining muscle but slimming down. The fat-o-meter scale indicated that I was somehow adding both muscle and fat, rather than burning fat.)

I want to start slowly, which will hopefully make for a less dramatic bathroom experience (turns out you need your quads to, uh, sit down.  Since sitting down is part of bathroom usage, I didn't quite make it all the way down and fell about half-way to the seat the last time I did heavy working out.  Quads are also necessary for stairs.  Thank goodness the kids can do laundry now!) I have a yoga swing that can also be used for bodyweight exercises, so I'll do that for 15 minutes a day.  I don't have a scale, but I will take body measurements and post any shrinkage here.

I'm hoping that I can figure out how to do this so that I don't hate exercise.  I actually enjoy the sensation of strong that comes when lifting weights (or trying to uproot trees), but the aftermath is so bad that I have really psyched myself out of challenging my muscles anymore.  Ok, I can do this.  It's only 21 days after all!